USB print server – software and hardware approach

Suppose you have a USB printer and 20 people in your company who need to access it remotely. Suppose some of your employees work in another country but still need to connect to the USB printer located in your office. Is it possible to share your printer in such a way that it gets available for access over any distance? Luckily, there are dedicated hardware and software solutions that help share USB devices over both LAN and the Internet. Let's see how they work and which benefits you get with each of them.

USB print server: hardware way

The reality is that sharing USB devices over Ethernet is not difficult as long as you use a specialized hardware - network print server. USB to LAN print server is a device designed for making a non-networked printer accessible to multiple users of a local network. The solution is capable of redirecting data over various TCP/IP protocols, like IPP, LPR/LPD, Telnet, etc. and thus can be a great new thing for your home or company. Just imagine, any Ethernet user is able to make use of a remote printer without having it physically inserted into their machine.

Affordable price and the ease of use are the additional advantages of a USB network print server. What’s more, you don't need to be an expert in network peripherals configuration to set up this device.

How to connect print server to network

To install your network printing service, you don't require any PCs. All you need to do is attach your USB printer to a USB port print server and, after that, link the hardware to your LAN by means of a standard Ethernet cable. Sometimes, it may also be necessary to use some additional programs coming together with the device.

What you should remember when choosing a print server is that not all solutions can work with printers produced by third-party manufacturers. So, before buying the device, it's worth checking if this hardware supports your printer model.

Another important point concerns the number of USB devices supported. A typical Windows print server can share up to 4 devices simultaneously. If you need to redirect mode USB peripherals at a time, you can try using a dedicated software. The software not only widens the possibilities of sharing multiple devices but offers connections over any distance.

USB Network Gate: software method

In spite of the many advantages a print server offers, you may reach that stage where sharing a printer over LAN is not enough and you need to redirect your USB device over the Internet. In this case, you can resort to the help of the dedicated software.

The software solution USB Network Gate offers complete USB sharing functionality. That means you'll be able to redirect not only your USB printer but virtually any USB device and enjoy full access to it from any remote location.

More interestingly, with USB Network Gate you get the chance to forward your devices to a virtual environment (VMware, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and more), and work with your remote USB printer in a remote desktop session, as the software supports RDP protocol.

Benefits of the dedicated software

The indisputable fact is that not limited by the distance, USB Network Gate is more flexible compared to the hardware solution. The app allows easy access to a valuable peripheral for all family members or company employees from wherever they are.

Multiple benefits of USB Network Gate include:

Cross-platform support. The software works well with Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes.

The ability to share an unlimited number of USB devices. In fact, with the app you can convert to a USB print server your Windows 10 PC and share all peripherals attached to it.

Thanks to advanced functionality combined with the ease of use, the software is growing in the popularity from day to day. Based on the unique port virtualization technology, USB Network Gate offers significant advantages which cannot be denied.